Back in the middle 1980's I was very friendly with another officer named David Stadleman. Dave moved down from the Midwest where he had been a deputy sheriff for several years before coming to the Cape Coral Police Department. One day Dave asked me if I would take him and a visiting sheriff friend of his for a fishing trip. I said yes and a date was picked for our trip.

Dave and his friend showed up as planned in daylight and I had the boat ready with poles and bait and some cool drinks. I drove to the Old Cape Coral Bridge, which had a reputation of having snook hanging around at night, with the hope of pouncing on the lady fish. I anchored the boat under the lights from the bridge so that we could cast our lines into the shadows not lit up by the bridge lights, knowing that is where the snook hide.

Dave and I were in the middle of the boat fishing from the sides. His friend was in the rear of the boat casting off the stern. After an hour or so of friendly chatter, mostly between Dave and his friend about the life of a policeman in warm weather, compared to the freezing weather he had back home in Minnesota, it's really dark and the three policemen fishing hear a loud snort and a smashing of the water.

You never saw three policemen move so quickly into a small huddle, with our three backs against each other waiting for the next move. We were frightened and made no attempt to hide it, all exclaiming, "what was that!!!" We calmed down a little and Dave brought up the fact that Manatees -- "sea cows" -- come up river for the winter to seek the warm waters of the large electrical plant in North Ft. Myers.

After I calmed down we moved the boat so that we were under the center span of the bridge, but not in the channel to avoid the flow of traffic. We were using shrimp as bait with normal 20lb. line for this area, not expecting to catch anything too big for us to handle.

Dave was the first one to shout, "I've got one!" That's the signal to pull all lines in so they don't get tangled up with the hooked fish. Dave was losing line to the fish -- as hard as he was winding he could not make progress with the line. Then the fish turned and swam directly at the boat leaving Dave with more loose line than he knew what to do with. As the medium sized snook approach the boat there was one jump up in the air and the snook spit out the bait and splashed into the water where we could see him.

Everybody was pumped up after the fight Dave had! We calmed down again and said we would give it another half hour before having to leave for home. Once again Dave got a hit. We pulled our poles in so he could fight this one by moving around the boat. It may have been about 10 minutes when suddenly this tarpon on Dave's pole decides to jump in the air! I have seen them jump 6 to 10 feet over the water -- when this one came down there was a tremendous smacking on the water and Dave's friend said, "what was that?" I said it sounded like a Volkswagen went over the bridge! We all agreed it was time to go home, as Dave's friend had seen enough for one night.

The next day I went to the tackle shop for odds and ends and I heard the counter man telling the story about last night when a boat had hooked a fish that splashed so hard it sounded like a Volkswagen fell off the bridge. I read somewhere that you should be careful of what you whisper behind closed doors because you will hear it shouted on the streets in the morning...